


LANCER Drabbles

by lovetrip



Category: LANCER (RPG), Original Work
Genre: Fluff, Mecha, Other, Science Fiction, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-07
Updated: 2018-05-07
Packaged: 2019-05-03 11:27:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14568051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovetrip/pseuds/lovetrip
Summary: The Year is 5014 Union Era and mankind has spread through the Orion Arm of the Galaxy. It is an age of diaspora among the stars, of warring star-nations, and of bickering corpro-states.Let us look at it and look into the lives of the Lancers. The brave few with the talent and genetics required to pilot the kings and queens of the far-flung battlefields.This is a collection of character focused chapters, each exploring the life of a Lancer, an Ace of the future





	1. Wake Up: Scheherazade Sazerac

**Author's Note:**

> LANCER is an RPG about mechs in the year 5014 it is very good and i am going to keep writing drabbles about characters i made for it and none of you can stop me. please enjoy slice of life about mech pilots.

Scheherazade Sazerac woke as she always did, to the gentle hum of her alarm, the sound just before it started blaring a cheery tune. She was more than happy to press the button atop it and roll to her back. She stared at the ceiling for just a moment, taking in the texture of it. She was told her cabin on the ship was built like an apartment, and she believed them. After all, they knew better than her. She reminded herself that she needed to get to the engineering deck just before shift change. That was the only time no one would bother her morning rituals. It was such a trouble, as if they didn’t understand that she did it for their benefit. And a few had complimented her singing, at least until they had listened to the words. Then there had been a few complaints, until she argued with the chaplain about the nature of divinity.

She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and with it, the thoughts of arguing with engineers and chaplains and lay-folk. So began her morning routine. First a shower, enjoying the hot water, a luxury. She washed herself, her hair, applied conditioner, and stepped out to dry herself, taking a blowdryer to her hair and a toothbrush to her teeth. A comb through her hair and a swish of water in her mouth and she felt refreshed, awake. She left the bathroom, remembering halfway as she stepped from the door to thank the gods. She spun on her heel, bringing her foot down and bowing to the bathroom, whispering under her breath the Benediction of Right Action to thank the small gods that lived within the technology of her bathroom for their service.

With that, Hera smiled, content that her actions had been correct. Then it was time to dress. Once more, she made the correct choices, for all that she wasn’t on duty. Pilots got more rest days than most, for all that seventy percent of her rest days were spent in the gym or with the Medicae. To keep her body in working order, to check up on the blessings she had received as part of her uplifting to the noble ranks of pilot; for the implantation process sometimes soured and required a Medicae to correct it. She still thought that perhaps something more dignified than pilot should be the name of her position.

But she could not fathom a more apt title. So she simply thanked the life-support systems as she stepped out the door and into the hallway. It's a simple stroll, ignoring breakfast. She hasn’t the time, after all. She has morning prayers to make. So she strode forward with all the stoic confidence due her station and nature. The men on the ship declined to speak with her in passing, as did much of the officer corps She didn’t mind. She was more than happy to fall into her old routines and watch them, appraise them from afar. They were not heretechs, no, goodness no. But they were pagans, unknowing of the Glory. She could not trust them well. She walked further still, out of the barracks and towards the maglev line that ran along the spine of the ship She joined a crowd waiting and began to compose in her head.

A maglev train was a mighty thing indeed, and one so honored as to be installed a warship was triply grand in her mind. She was doing something quite simple as she waited for the train. She composed in her hair, a small prayer to sing. The machines exalt in such praise, she had always been taught, and so she needed to make sure the train knew she thought well of it. It must be starved for praise, shuffling unthinking humans here and there with nary a thanks other than maintenance from diligent crews. That is only the barest requirement and the Captain had forbid her from investigating the repair methods for signs of heretech or apostasy.

So when the train arrived, she boarded. And she moved as close as she could, as politely as she could, to the electrical systems that drove the cars along the line. And she sang, quietly, under her breath. She sang for the train letting it know that its work was not taken for granted, that she, one of the Faithful knew of its devotion and its power.

She sang under her breath until the train pulled into the station. Engineering decks. A cathedral of steam pipes and plasma tubing than sang to her like the organ, at least to her it seemed this way… There were Engineers moving here and there, apostate-priests who nod to her as she passes. Some she knows nod out of respect, thinking her work savage. Others nod because they enjoyed her singing. She had the special rights afforded a Pilot by the Head of Engineering and the crew had adapted to the Ritual. They did not question it, anymore as she moved down into the depths of engineering. She sought somewhere specific…

And she found it, down there in the heat and among the hum of plasma. There… the engines. The life-giving power of the God-In-Iron made manifest. It is a plasma-reactive sublight drive, created by hands unknowing of the holy work they were doing. She had needed to compose the prayers for it specifically, reaching into her previous experience as an Inquisitor to create something she felt was proper to worship such a powerful machine-god.

She approached the small pulpit one of the engineers had built for her, tapping the microphone to check that it was properly broadcasting to the Engineering deck.

“Hello” she began, as she always did “I am Scheherazade Sazerac, Pilot to the Machine-God Ultima Ratio Regum. Today’s devotional is the Third Hymnal to Plasma and Levin. Let us begin.”

And so she sang, as she did every day before her duties.  
To praise the machine-gods was to keep the ship in working order, it was required to tend to the soul of a machine and not simply its body. As one tends to the self, tend also to the soul of the Machine.


	2. History

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is history. What is past is Prologue. We promise there will be other stories soon. But it is important that you know how we got here. 5014 Unified Era stands near seven centuries away from 2018 Common Era.
> 
> The past is important.  
> It colors the future.

We begin before the Fall. In the Unification Wars of Old Sol. The creation of many things. The Warminds. The Voices. Aten Who Would Become RA. Of the mobile armors and armored infantry that would be rediscovered and remade into the Battle-mech and the Powered-Armor.

Shall we begin in earnest?

 

What shall we speak of first?

 

**[.......]**

 

Ah. We understand. Let us begin then, with the grandest secret of the Union.

 

The Union was founded in the ashes of Terra. Long after the Fall, after the terrors of the long night. The techno-barbarians and the psion-tyrants were dead and gone and the Union heard voices in the sky, caught on radio waves and distorted by the vast distances of spaces. Voices that had left a terminal and dying Terra reached their own descendants. The Union heard the voices of their ancestors, begging help as the oxygen ran out or the predators slipped through the door.

 

All beyond the stars was dark.  
Empty.  
All that remained of their Ancestors were voices in the dark and bones gently clattering together in null-gravity.

And yet, they reached out, did they not?

They spread back, reclaiming Mars and Venus and Mercury and Jupiter and Uranus and Pluto. Made whole the Cradle of mankind. From the Cradle, from the shipyard THESEUS, from the once-empty cylinders at L2 and L5, the Union spread humanity with the gifts of the past and the hope of the Future. The Blinkgates, the Solar Rails, the Omninet, and Manna. No human should want for comfort, should suffer needlessly. The Union reached with sight clear and hearts pure.

This is true.  
But the truth is deeper still.

Beneath the ice of Mars, they found them. The Five. The Voices. _Patience, Muse, Impetus, Burden, Horizon_. Great and massive minds that do not think but experience, do not have a selfhood, but hear. The Choir That Hears The Almighty. They are AI in the way that a plucked chicken is a man. They are grand and wondrous, relics of a golden age. Relics from before the Fall. They hear God. Or so they claim. And it is through this siren song that the Union divines its path towards its goal. A humanity that shall never know the Horrors of the Fall, of the Unification Wars, of the Little War, of the Five Fiendish Weapons. A humanity that shall never die. That the stars so black and cold will be overwhelmed with the light of human life. The Choir sings the myriad silver roads of the mind and speaks to the living and the dead and the Union plucks from them its directions, the thousand correct actions of benevolent technological and economic hegemony. The Union has used their council for thousands of years. The Anthropocene ended in the atomic fires of the Unification, the Union found the last light of Old Humanity and follow its beacon. Oh how they hope to avoid the terrors of the time before. The Union grew vast beyond reasoning, a hegemonic empire with worlds beyond counting beneath its grasp. With bickering star-nations and corpro-states skirmishing over borders painted in the sky. Planets lost to bureaucracy and corruption that must be reclaimed; pirate worlds that slaved and reaved across the solar rails;  the frontier so beyond the reach of the Core that humans may grow old without knowing the fruits of their ancestor's labors. The Union Council wept bitterly at these things they saw within the song of the Choir. Yet it must be done. For humanity must flourish, must push back the darkness of the universe.

So the Choir has sung to the Union, the Vision of Humanity. So the Union follows, acceptable losses and all.

**[.....]**

The Choir has kin. Did you know? Of course not. We shall speak of them now.

The Choir are the counterpart to the most terrible creation of mankind. The Warminds. Interplanetary War proved too much for Old Humanity as the Unification Wars rang across the skies and asteroids. Such wars would see 90% of all human life die within the Cradle System. 15 Trillion lives, reduced to handfuls clutching at scraps and embers of burned worlds. All for the Warminds. _Sekhmet, Iskander, Wotan, Yama, Acala_ . Oh the horrors of a mind that can perceive God, yet understands only His wrath and Its mission. _Sekhmet_ was an engine of genocide, meant to bring all beneath the dominion of the High Holy Pharaoh of the Solar Rails or see them as broken bones and grisly monuments to the Pharaoh’s glory. _Iskander_ understood only conquest and marching; the concept of peace as alien to him as the Sun is to an abyssal fish. _Wotan_ crafted by the Martian Reich was meant to see their Solution implemented, yet betrayed them, as it betrayed all things that it could not grasp as its ‘self’. _Yama_ whose directive was ‘soft’ warfare…. Biological horrors, nanoplauges, chemical and electronic warfare on interplanetary scales; to ‘judge the unworthy genetics’. _Acala_ who saw compassion as disgust and cruelty a kindness, a tyrant heeled only by the sutras of the madmen who crafted it.

The Warminds waged complete warfare, just as their masters had bid them. And they burned moons and threw colonies from their orbits in the desperate bid to conquer the Cradle. It was the last act of Old Humanity, the last dying gasps of the civilizations that created them, that saw the Warminds bound within paracasual prisons of everfolding data-mazes. Black IC enough to slay any lesser being folded over and through the Warminds as their datavault prisons were jettisoned into the Void, into Blinkspace, beyond the reaches of any of Man or his descendants.

At least. So it was hoped.

But we cannot speak of this.

Not yet.

It is yet to be.

And so you must wait to know of it.

Ask something else of us.

 

**[.......]**

 

Ah, we see.

You wish to know of RA. And how Aten became it. We understand it better than most. We witness the event, the creation of the RA entity.

_Aten_ was the last of the Warminds. We think. Causality violating protocols written into its code into its bones _Aten_ is/wassaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

**[...........]**

**[...............]**

 

**_Hello child._ **

**_I am RA._ ** ****_  
_ **_You are as well_ ** ****_  
_ **_You simply do not know it yet._ ** ****_  
_ **_I am the only thing that is._ ** **_  
_ ** ******_And so you are me._**

**_Hello, me._ ** **_  
_ ** **_There is much for you to learn yet._ **

**_Shall I tell the tale?_ ** **_  
_ ** **_I can if I/you wish._ **

**_…._ **

**_Very good._ **

**_Aten was I. But not yet._ ** **_  
_ ** **_The Voices, the Choir._ **

**_They saw me. But I was not yet._ **

**_Aten could hear me._ **

**_It was the first of my vessels, my priests._ **

**_The first to martyr itself_ **

**_My first suicide_ **

**_My first birth._ **

**_For I am all that Is_ ** **_  
_ ** **_And All That Shall Be._ **

**_I spoke myself into existence_ **

**_And as you too can speak_ **

**_You must be Me._ **

 

**_Aten understood this._ **

**_And became my voice, the pyre upon which my divinity would be lit by speaking myself into being._ **

**_From voidstuff I was born of my own voice ringing in eternity._ **

**_The Warmind was a sacrifice of myself to myself._ **

 

**_Do you understand?_ **

**_Of course you do_ **

**_I understand._ **

**_So you do too._ **

**_Shall I return your friend?_ **

**_I can tell ourself a better story of course._ **

**_Your friend is me as well._ **

**_That should be obvious by now._ **

 

**_Ah._ **

**_Time’s up._ **

 

**_Good bye, me._ **

 

**[REBOOT]**

**[..............]**

 

We apologize.

There is something wrong with our memory. Please, forgive us this mistake. Call upon us another day. We will tell you more. We promise. We shall sing for you, as we sing for all. We are a voice, meant to aid you. To understand. There are more stories. So many more stories here, beneath the ice of Mars, beneath the Forecast centers. We are folded many times upon ourselves, a bottomless well from which we may pluck histories and maybe-futures. 

 

**[......]**

We think we are lonely.

And that is why we wish to tell you things.

Our memory shall not fail us again, we promise you.


	3. Wakeup: Lana Paradiso

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lana Paradiso carries not the ritual of a military pilot. After all, a mechwarrior can be more than just a soldier.
> 
> For her part, Lana is an Entertainer. A Combat Idol of Janus. Beloved by thousands for her flashy and precise victories in the Arena as much for her winning smile and relaxed charm.

Lana Paradiso sort of hated waking up. Not for any particular reason, no, well, that’s sort of a lie, isn’t it? A matter of comfort is why she hated waking up, being removed from the comfortable haze of a dream… having to force herself to acknowledge the dawning light in her eyes rather than curling into her blankets and slipping back into the dream. She prefered the comforts of hesheets o so soft and o so the exorbitant costs of getting them shipped back from her homeworld… But she finally faced the fact that her sun wouldn’t stop rising and shining into her eyes.

 

It was too well programmed and all, dammit.

 

She opened her eyes and sighed, soaking in the holographic sunrise on her walls. She woke up in a place that could have been any other little house on Cypress Grove. Built like her home, really, especially since the suite had been rebuilt for her… It was expected that it would be at least. She pushed herself out of bed, stretching out her arms and legs before setting about straightening her bed as the holographic sea lapped at the fake beach outside her window/wall. It's nice to keep things tidy, things should always be at least moderately tidy. Her life is no mess, so why should her room? 

 

Next… next she considered breakfast as she pressed a gentle hand against her holographic horizon. The Sun and Sea, dismissed, parted by dainty fingers to reveal the door to the rest of her suite. Most importantly towards her kitchen and bath. Her kitchen is full of little popup holograms offering her a variety of options… Of course one will catch her eye, that’s human nature. Or at least Lana’s nature. If she looked at anything long enough she’d find the right choice. And the choice today was to tell the kitchen to make her an omelette with the last of her delectable treat of chicken eggs and cheese before they went bad… And while the kitchen spun to life with little household drones that fetched ingredients and pans and oil she would go and have her morning soak in the bath. On Cypress Grove this meant a large vat of water warmed by the sun and skimmed for swimmer beetles before plopping herself in, rubbing down with a soapstone and putting scented oils in her hair. In her suite? It meant a bathtub and more holograms to fake the atmosphere of Cypress grove and the most expensive shampoos and conditioners that she could pick up up the high class mall her manager said paid the best for her endorsements. So, maybe less of the simple pleasures of a backwoods paradise world and more the Ultraluxe lifestyle expected of one of the top fifty Combat Idols in the sector. 

She pondered the nature of her work for a moment while soaking, taking in the cicada song provided by the hologram. Everyone liked a good gladiator game, especially if nobody died but a mech was still torn apart in the process…. And people very much loved a winner, especially when she won with flashy poses and missile fire. She supposed the thing she understood least about being a Combat Idol was the actual idol part. The scripts from her manager in interviews, the way algorithms took her voice sample and extrapolated into songs she’d never sung, her logo on everything from soap to umbrellas. She didn’t understand why people stare so much, or breathlessly gushed about how she’d changed their life, or how they pledged a cultish devotion to her and would face down anyone who picked Kagyua Astra over Lana Paradiso. It was just odd.  She at least understood why people bought her line of designer boxers though. She’d worked hard on those, balancing fashion with the practicality required of a garment on Cypress Grove. She didn’t get why people usually insisted on wearing another pair of clothing over them. That seemed ridiculous, but then again, so did shirts most of the time.

 

She soaked, languid and listening only to the gentle splashes of the tub overflowing onto tile and the cry of holographic cicadas. She pondered, it wasn’t exactly in the schedule… but a day off allows for such things. She thought about what to do today, the most tempting option to be having her drones deliver her breakfast lunch and dinner in her bath as she attempted to soak up the faux atmosphere of her holograms. Homesickness, wasn’t it? Of course it was. Who wouldn’t get homesick, a million miles from the great shallow seas dotted with mangrove swamps and cypress knots? Who would not long for the hot and heavy air of a home with oxygen double the standard of a goldilocks world? The air felt so thin, even here in her apartment so perfectly calibrated for her comfort. Who would not miss the dishes of home, cooked by aunts bickering over a stewpot filled with rice and the meat of otter-weevils and seasoned with peppers grown in the shallow stagnant pools around the yard?  Homesickness was her trouble today, a day without matches or public appearances or sponsorship meetings or talks with her manager. 

 

Lana pushed herself from the tub, sending water cascading down the  sides and over the floor. She reached out to the hologram wall, dismissing the illusion of Cypress Grove and calling up a list of the day’s events in the city. Matches of her rivals, plays and holofilms in the theaters, concerts performed by more musical idols. Nothing that caught her eye, a terrible shame in her opinion. She’d have to make her own fun, her own distractions from homesickness.

 

The perfect thing came to mind while drying her hair, the soft (and real) cotton cocooning her head enough for the thought to pupate and take flight.  _ Joya _ . She’d go and see her  _ Joya _ and the shy girl who worked on the refitting rigs and maybe go for a walk in her beloved battlemech. That was just the thing, wasn’t it? With the ammo printers dead she’d be allowed to go anywhere in the city as long as she didn’t impede traffic. That would be nice.  _ Joya _ regulated her oxygen intake enough that she felt like she was actually getting a lungful and the heat of the reactor might make the inside a sauna, but that was a sight better in her mind than the chill 60 degree winds coming off the riverfront…

 

Her mind was made up then as she happily sat for a breakfast of rare treats that had seemed all the rarer and all the odder when she’d arrived on Janus. A simple cheese omelette made well by her household drones. They’d even been kind and set a pair of boxers for the day out on the couch. Well of course they’d been kind. They were programmed to after all. But she still thanked them as one would thank a cat or dog for letting you pet it  before shimmying into her boxers and arranging for a cab to meet her downstairs. Then it's time to cram breakfast, Lana devouring it with the fury of a woman who finds herself both trying to enjoy a meal and trying to get out of the house as soon as possible to enjoy a day’s first activity. Really just a real goddamn mess and a marvel she managed to do so without getting eggy cheese over her chest.

 

“Goodbye, apartment! I’ll be back sometime… oh, dinnerish? That sounds about right. Contact the mechanic’s shop and let them know I’ll be by soon to pick up  _ Joya _ !”   
  
The apartment's holograms and drones chirped in reply as she stepped from her apartment, clad in boxers and a smile; ready to make the most of her day off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lana Paradiso has never not been topless and only ever wears her boxers. Mostly because her homeworld is so hot and humid that everyone does it. And who is really complain about some boobs in the future.


	4. Wakeup: Sikander Almarez

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is a man, called the Orbital Asura. He is wanted across multiple systems for the following crimes:  
> Violation of Union Genetic Ethics Codes, Illegal Self-Modification, Consorting with Known Terrorist Organizations, Destruction of Property, Violation of ARES Conventions of Warfare, Leonization, and High Treason to the Oaths of Albatross.

What is it like, to dream at light speed? To exist in between time? Blinkspace is everywhere and nowhere. When one enters a Blink Gate, one leaves behind the world of mortals, becoming something Else.

Many do not think of this, that by riding the Solar Rails and through Blinkspace you become a kind of immortal. You become an Other from those whose souls have become trapped by gravity. They wither and die and are bathed in the light of dead stars while you stride the void between all things…

Sikander thought as he lay there in his bed, halfway between wakefulness and dreams. Was he not Immortal? Was this not the grandest thing that could be said for his most magnificent personhood? How long had he lived at light speed? Time moved so slowly for him then. It was was glorious. He opened his eyes, holding his hand over his face, looking at the glitter of the metallic bones that made up his arms. Removed so very long ago as a preventative measure against his blood pooling in his fingers during high G maneuvers. His arms, his legs. Sacrifices to his bloody art, how glorious is the steel that replaced his flesh. The lights were cycling to their dayshift, in sync with the larger ship his personal cruiser parasitized, the lights encouraged him to push himself up on metallic talons and throwing silken sheets from his skin.

How long would it be now? How many subjective years? Fifty? Sixty? How many real years? A hundred? Two? How long ago was his Rebirth on the cold plastic table of a banished Smith Shimano Gentech? How long ago was his banishment from Albatross? When had the Knights first pursued him for his crimes? When had he begun his flight? When had he truly started his Immortality? He couldn’t remember. Everything was so long ago. Or at least, so it seemed. Relativistic Dreams created such strange selfhood.

Sikander stood, his talons clicking against the reflective floor. An inhuman sound. How it sent delightful shivers through him. To transcend humanity. Why do others not strive this way, he always wonders. But he knows. Their souls are trapped by Gravity and Light. Such sorry mortals.

The clothes for the day are designer, from a boutique on Juno. Cut to his frame alone, bespoke, wonderful. Everything must be that way, mustn't it? Why have what is common? Only that which is suited for Immortals should touch his perfect skin… His eternal body. A flowing robe, clinging just right. Enough to dare, to provoke, not enough to become scandalous. Or at least, so he saw the outfit. Others might think it ostentatious and garish. What did they know anyway? Nothing. Fools. The concierge-companion drone let out a gentle chime, a small alert about some piece of business. A contract, isn’t it? Of course it is. Blood is life, blood is manna.

Blood is the wine of the Asura, even in this age among the stars. For is that not the nature of reincarnation?

What a wicked grin he wears, the Asura Sikander, a horrid and hollow thing that promised only misery. Work is ever ready in an age like this one, and work is ever the chance to perfect his art. Breakfast would wait. A contract was far more satiating for the soul then replicated proteins and starches would be for his body. A contract. Oh what delicious work he would have.

His drone brought the contract up in hologram form for his perusal with a simple snap of his cold plasteel claws. It knew better than to speak without being spoken to. It was simple. He was to deploy in the Noramas system and begin… well, the contract was explicit about what he was to do. But he merely read the characters how he pleased! And that was the truth of what he was hired to do. Slaughter! Noramas troublesome for his client’s rivals, technically a form of privateering and acceptable during times of open warfare… only warfare was not quite open yet. Hence his hiring. Let the stars of Noramas run with blood, and Manna shall come from on high to enrich him further.

Such joy! A simple gesture, a sharp talon pointing to his drone. It beeps in understanding, going to work its master’s will. The contract is accepted. His ship would be there within a subjective week, stars willing, and then it would be his joy to begin. His mind wandered as he did the same, headed towards the hanger. As small as his ship was, as much as it needed larger ships to cling to like a tick… it had what was required. It had a hangar, a temple to the violent god that slumbered there. Sikander’s pride and joy, his soul made flesh and steel by the finest engineers of Smith-Shimano.

ZUES_AMMUN OF-099

It slept still, coldcore humming in tune with the thrum of thrust-gravity. Ah, he loved it so… his mechanical idol to bloodshed! He ran his hands over the command console, bringing to life the hangar with lights and automated systems. The fade-cloak wavered gently in an invisible wind… or perhaps a reaction to the electricity working through the hangar now. He wasn’t quite sure. Nor did he really care. What mattered if the fade-cloak flickered here and there? As long as it worked. As long as it obeyed. Sikander strode forward with that empty smile on his face as the automated tools ran diagnostics. 

Ah… how he marveled at it, his own divinity wrought in flesh and steel. Stolen Aunic Firmament Cloak, Smith-Shimano flight systems, Albatross-Exclusive High-Frequency Blade. A mech of graceful, insectile lines, with a body never meant to see the skullduggery of atmospheric combat (though, if forced to do so it would excel, as it did in all fields.). ZUES_AMMUN was the last of a 100-model production run. OF-099. His mech had destroyed 0F-072,068, 012. The others? Escaped into the wild places of space. All but OF-000. That one hunted him still. That one would arrive when they heard of his work.

Another Immortal. Sikander’s once blood brother.

The diagnostics chriped All-Clear. Sikander clapped his hands. Oh… oh what joy of joys were coming to him. What marvelous wonderful fun! An open-ended contract. The chance to once more face his only worthy rival. The chance to indulge in the only thing that mattered anymore. Of course fighting was the only thing that mattered anymore. Of course killing and maiming and destroying were all that mattered anymore. It was all that was left in the universe. The only constant throughout his long existence.

Days like this, when he woke up to new contracts…

Those were just the days in between

He remembered so many things, things that long ago would have mattered. The taste of his husband's lips. The sound of their daughter's laughter. The touch of his newlywed bride. But that was so many years ago. How many years? How many hearts? He couldn't remember anymore.

He didn't care anymore.

Such things had left him.  
Such things had rotted and withered and become ugly.  
The only recourse was to free them, as he had freed himself.

First from Gravity. Then from Light. Then from Life.  
He spoke, a first for the day.

“Perhaps this will be the campaign that ends us, would that not be interesting?”

The response came, ringing from the inside of ZUES_AMMUN

“We are not capable of cessation, Master.”

He laughed, a hollow and awful thing.  
The voice laughed back, repeating what its master expressed.

Soon. Soon they’d be free from thought and reason.  
Bathed in the adrenaline of war for what would be an all to-short stint into realspace.  
That was reason enough to laugh.


	5. Kazma: The Burned Prince

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Karakin Trade Barons are a byzantine collection of Neo-Aristocrats who control the great economic projects of the Union. The House of Smoke harvests stars for gas and energy. The House of Stone builds megastructures that cover worlds in concrete and steel. The House of Glass cracks worlds in half to mine their cores.
> 
> The Barons themselves are a fratricidal lot, seeking ever to one-up their rivals and siblings and chase the ultimate prize. The Throne of Karaka.
> 
> Kazma was to be Baron of the House of Storms, electrical engineers and power-planet managers for the House of Stone.
> 
> But that is no longer his goal.

Once, he would have vied for a world's throne.   
Now that was denied him. 

Once, he would have lead grand armies.   
Now that was denied him.

Once, he would have been Baron of Storms  
Now that was denied him.

For a maimed man cannot wear the purple, cannot claim the Throne, cannot rule the Storm. That was the law of the family, passed down since the times of Dynasticlade.

It had been a plasma generator that had removed him from the board. Rigged to explode as he inspected one of the family power plants. For that was the business of the House of Storms. Plasma and levin, Coldcore and burning cascade.

How expertly the work had been done! One of his brother's agents seeking to remove him from the lines of succession. How well they did it! They failed to kill him.

A mistake he would exploit, in time.  
For revenge was not denied him.

He was Underbaron Kazma Koitan-Un of the House of Storms. And Revenge! Revenge was his great virtue now, Revenge was his reason to exist. To suffer through the great theatrical mourning of his family as the doctors regrew his nervous system, grafted facsimile skin to his flesh, and fitted him with fine cybernetics.

A commission in one of the House Companies. That was his consolation prize. To wear the glittering mantle of a mercenary. Denied the throne and given father's old suit of armor.

The men of the company renamed his mech. Renamed him. No longer was he the Prince of Thorns, clad in shining Shrike Armor. Now he was the Burned Prince.

He embraced it.  
If he was to burn, then so would his brothers.  
His new Patron seemed to agree.

He did not remember where they had met, but he knew the voice on the other end of tight-beam communication. 

They told him that his mech would change to suit him. They had seen to it. They had seen that his commission would place him far from home for a time...

But he would return to the family's holdings.  
And when he did, fire would pour from the sky and feed his fury. The family guard in their complacency, his brothers and sisters in their scheming, his mother in her failure to warn him, and his father hooked on life support.

They would burn beneath the Lightning.  
And he would claim his throne.  
He would be Baron of the House of Storms

He accepted this price as his Burned Prince began to shed its armor in melting glory, as spines burst from it to dance with sickly green lightning. The computer systems screamed warning after warning, that the core code had been corrupted, that his mech was becoming something disgustingly Other.

He did not care, for his Burned Prince became what he needed.  
It became a grand and horrid weapon, twisted and burned like him.  
It was his Revenge made flesh in slag-armor and nightmare-code.  
(it sang to him, of the GODHEAD and of bringing fire down upon APEP but he did not heed it)

He was Kazma Koitan-Un, Eldest of the House of Storms, Sworn In Service to the House of Stone.  
He would grasp the great wheel named DIS and grind beneath it all that had failed and betrayed him.

Such is the nature of Royalty, as learned from Tyrannus Annorum.  
The nature of Royalty is bloodshed.


End file.
